I’m in a semi-minority when I say that John Hillcoat’s film “The Road” is a dreadful movie. However, I know I’m in a vast minority when I say that Cormac McCarthy’s novel “The Road,” the book Hillcoat’s film is based on, is just as bad – if not worse. Yes, I’m taking issue with the novel that won the Pulitzer Prize and Entertainment Weekly‘s distinction of the best book of the past 25 years.
To all the haters who are sure to be drawn out of hiding by this pan, I assure you that I’m not some uneducated Philistine who is quibbling with McCarthy’s unconventional prosaic style. Sure, it makes it a difficult read, but I actually quite enjoy it. The experience is tough but refreshing, particularly in McCarthy’s “No Country for Old Men.”
But “The Road” is just tedious and boring. Yes, I know that’s the point! But beyond a certain point, I get it. I understand how the man, played with vigor in the film by Viggo Mortensen, and the boy, portrayed by then newcomer Kodi Smit-McPhee in a rather impressive debut, feel on the road. I don’t need to spend hours of my time reading them do the same things and having minor variations of the same conversation, day after day. It makes for a great short story or short film, but stretched to novel and feature film lengths, monotony ensues.
Perhaps Hillcoat was fated to displease me with “The Road” since many of my issues with the text and story seem to be rather systemic, foundational quibbles. Yet the upstart Australian director had made a capable, taut thriller in “The Proposition” before he tackled McCarthy’s work. (“Lawless” had its issues as well, but I still admired the work on display.)
Joe Penhall’s script tries to add some sensationalism to make the story more tolerable (and commercially viable, I can imagine), but the attempts fail miserably. Making The Man’s wife a larger character in the narrative adds nothing to the story, even when she’s played by the talented Charlize Theron. Adding further dimensions of terror to their foes on the road don’t make the movie any more thrilling. Instead, we are left with a film that ambles slowly and uninterestingly towards bleak nothingness and can’t succeed at the one thing that should have been a no-brainer for it: a deep character study of the Man and his Son.
Marshall and the Movies 
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